Divide
by yaksa
Summary: Even within a species, there is a division between normal and alien. A search to find acceptance in this fact. Future fic. ZADR.
1. Circling the Drain

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Invader Zim. Jhonen does. It would be pretentious and false of me to claim any ownership.

**Circling the Drain**

He crawled in the window, flopped down in bed and laid there, his entire body screaming at him in pain and exhaustion. Maybe it was all the blood he had lost, all the holes that had been bored into his skin and through muscle and bone. His broken body rested there, crimson spilling and leaking to tint the sheets the same color. A color that startlingly reminded him of a certain pair of eyes.

He swallowed, staring up in the darkness at the still open window. He pulled himself up by an injured arm and slid it shut, streaks of scarlet left smeared across the glass and window sill. He flopped down again. So tired; the darkness seemed to be closing in. And he had dealt with this sort of thing enough to know that if he didn't do something, it might never let him go.

He sat up, painfully grabbing at the sheets to help himself upright. The trench coat shrugged off and fell in a heap on the floor, the fabric stiff and damp with a liquid that didn't show color but left a dark stain that seemed to stare out at him in the dim light.

His shoulder ached. It was almost a sickening intensity, and the throbs it sent down his arm made if feel as if his fingers were swelling and his wrist exploding. He pushed it away, turned his mind to think about the other side of his body instead. Dib pushed himself to a standing position, knees and ankle screaming, and walked slowly over to his desk, over the floor strewn with piles of shadow and lumps of darkness. His fingers fumbled blindly in a drawer, colliding dully with numerous random objects before they wrapped around what he was looking for. He pulled the long knife out and watched as it glinted in the moonlight that flowed in from the unshaded window. A glimpse of his face in the reflective metal before he lifted it to his shoulder and slid the blade carefully beneath the cloth there. He stared at the desk, looking with his mind's eye as he carefully drew the sharp knife against the fabric, the hiss and rip of dividing cloth.

Eventually he managed to cut the shirt off of himself, the fabric sticky and damp with his blood as it fell to the floor. He stood there staring at it for a second, down the length of his leg as his hands rested heavily on the edge of the desk. His eyes fogged over in a dreamlike state, mind stuffed with cotton. Dib blinked and shook his head, biting back against the screamingly painful tempest that motion produced. The dream state passed, and he looked down at his shoulder, really only able to see it with one eye, and then only half in the area of his glasses. He couldn't make it out. He swore under his breath and glanced up at the closed door.

He made his way to the bathroom, painful footsteps sucking at the floor. His boots were slicked over in blood and slime. Dead fingers met the cold metal of the handle and he turned it to step inside the room, shutting the door behind himself before hitting the light.

In the stark reality of the fluorescent bulbs overhead, he stared at himself in the mirror. Blood streaked across his chest and face. In so many places, the skin was punctured or ripped or bruised to a shade that almost looked as if it were bleeding. He ran a hand down his arm, feeling the wounds with careful but bloodlessly cold fingers. And then they met the shoulder, the one that was torn open and bleeding around ugly black clots and tattered flesh. Cartilage was almost visible, and he felt his stomach lurch at the thought.

Memory seemed to seep into his brain, and scarlet fingers fumbled at the medicine cabinet as he pulled it open to grab some gauze. There, in his hand, the whiteness of the bandages already being tinted by the blood on his fingers. He stared. Yeah, that would help. Frozen, he couldn't pull his eyes from the staining gauze, so many images flooding through his mind of the fight and all the things that had been said. That had gone wrong in a way that seemed as it if was the culmination of years of pent up fate. He couldn't move. The dream was pulling him in around the edges of his vision, the past hour on replay. Scenes shifted in a circle, more blurry in the middle but still there. Now wasn't now. That could all wait.

"Do you want to kill yourself? You're gonna die if you just stand there." The voice was quiet but irritated, and he snapped out of that strange reality to glance over to see the door open an inch, one golden iris framed in its space against the blackness beyond.

He just stared at her, angry for some reason he couldn't exactly place. But he always felt that these days.

Gaz stepped inside and shut the door behind herself. She stood there, glaring up at him for a moment before pushing him down on the side of the bathtub. The haze was fading, and he watched her with clear eyes as she dug through the cabinet, pulling out a needle and thread. She perched on the edge of the sink, body held taut and crow-like in her black pajamas She threaded it and knotted off the end, watching him for a moment, eyes hard, before she grabbed a cup of water and came over to dump it's contents over his shoulder.

He flinched a little as the icy water traced down his skin, stinging at wounds not healed. Not even closed. Gaz sat down next to him, her stature concrete that she didn't like being here, doing this. She glanced up at him once, making sure that he knew what was going to happen before she grabbed his arm and held him steady.

The needle bit into tattered flesh. He watched her in the mirror, watched the grotesque scene of his younger sister sewing up an almost fatal wound in this shoulder. He looked away, disgusted. He was supposed to be stronger than this, strong enough to be able to deal with something like this. This was pitiful.

The needle jabbed into a more tender part of his shoulder, and he felt a jolt go through himself, the sick feeling rising in his stomach.

"Don't flinch, stupid." Gaz hissed, her eyes shooting up again to glare into his own. He just returned it, cold and steady.

He watched her in the mirror, mind drifting in and out of the haze that was fighting to take him. It kept replaying the fight, what had led up to it and all the changes that had suddenly revealed themselves. The open door, the upper levels of the base empty and unguarded. The flash of crimson and a steely gray, Zim shooting out of the shadows with fire in his eyes. His face stained and that deep, deep anger ever so apparent on his face. The flashes and blurs of the battle that had come after, filled with the sound to metal sinking into flesh and howls of frustration in a voice that wasn't human.

"There." Gaz muttered, popping the dream around him as she bit through the rest of the thread and tied it off, wrapping the wound in gauze. She finished and stood up, eyes biting into his own as she went back to the sink and washed the blood off her hands. Dib's blood, spiraling down the sink, in the same way his life was circling the drain as he continued to chase everything that got him nowhere. He looked away, disgusted with himself and everything in general.

Gaz grabbed his wrist, pulled him roughly to a standing position and killed the light before stepping out into the hall. She had socks on and he couldn't hear her footsteps as she led him through the darkness, down into the depths of the house and into one of Membrane's many labs. His mind was drifting into the fog again as she pushed him into a seat again, one of his dad's swiveling chairs he noticed as the thing slid a little from his weight. He slumped back in the seat, letting the haze cloud his vision, seeing through the fuzzy gray and picking out sequences. Zim, that horrible evil grin, and the tears running down his alien face that only added to the sense of insanity in his tiny body. Danger lurked in the fog, he could see it moving around like some colossal black hell hound, searching.

Gaz's hand wrapped around his arm, bent it straight. He blinked, the fog clearing, the glimpse of the death-beast fading away. She glared at him, golden eyes harsh in the darkness of the room. He saw what she was doing. Another needle, this one hollow and attached to a long tube. She clamped her hand around his upper arm, twacked the inside of his elbow and took her pick of the half empty veins. Dib watched the needle go in, watched as she turned the valve on the bag of blood that hung from a scaffold she had pulled up next to him. The little streak of red arched along the thin clear tubing, flowing slowly into his arm, into his body.

A sound escaped him, something that could have been a laugh but that was too cold and real. Gaz glared at him for it, rolled her eyes and turned to go back upstairs.

"Let the blood run out before you go back upstairs. Next time you come home half dead, don't wake me up."

She was gone. It was as if she had vanished, and he wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light or if he had passed out for a second. He cleared his throat, dry and scratchy and slick with blood. Eyes slid closed again, his mind clear in the stark silence of the room. Cold, stiff fingers tightened around the arms of the chair, and he slid down a little, trying to not rest so much weight on that gash across his lower back.

He felt clearer, less foggy and ghostlike. The haze was disappearing, both along the edges of his vision and in the depths of his mind. The clarity was strong, like the silence of the room, firm and reassuring.

But it made it harder to think back. And all he could think of was how cold he was shirtless and still lacking in blood. A glance up. Still half the bag left. He could wait. The memories would come.

-

The base was a wreck. Zim glowered at it from where he hung, perched on spindly spider legs in the middle of the living room. The walls had been knocked down, and he could see the house next door through the gaping hole right through the center of where the couch should have been. A flurry of Irken curses skittered through is mind, but he did not mouth them. There were better ways to vent, and that was evident by the mess he now stood in the middle of.

His fists clenched at his sides, arms taut and lightly flexed. He could feel the tears tracing their way down his face again, and he was annoyed that he could find no way to make that go away. The stark pain of betrayal. The thought that all of this had been for no reason at all.

The Tallest were wrong. He would never believe them. They were liars in every aspect of the word. He wasn't a failure of an Invader. He wasn't lacking in all the things they had said. He was the greatest being that had ever lived, and they still seemed to ignore that fact. He could feel his own impending greatness, smoldering deep in his chest.

Zim would show them. How dare they send him on a mission that was a joke! How dare they hide that behind his back throughout all these horribly filthy years he had spent mired on this worthless dirt-clod of a world. How dare they laugh at him for all those years. Had he not proven his deadliness, his ruthless desire for destruction in the success of Operation Impending Doom 1? So, with that as proof, they had sent him on a fake mission? Oh, they would pay dearly.

He would make them see, he would rub their faces in it until they were as humiliated and hated as he was.

The left side of the spider legs twitched, spasmed in a terrible array of blue sparks. The contraption collapsed, throwing Zim to the rubble littered floor. And then he did utter the curses that had come to mind a moment before. Even that was denied him, the feeling of height that he did not yet have. Oh, but they would still pay. He would become the Tallest when he overthrew this impossibly filthy world, threw that fact in their faces and finally grew in stature, as was always the case with a successful Invader.

Zim glared out through the broken wall, eyes piercing into the brick of the house next door. He seemed to sense something next to him, and his gaze ripped away.

"Gir."

The little robot peeked out from beneath the half of the couch that was thrown up against the television. "Yes, Master?"

Zim whirled, reached out and grabbed his minion by the body, grip so tight that it would have hurt a creature made of flesh. He spoke with stark, slow clarity. "You will put this room back in working order before the horrible doom-sun comes up. Understand?"

Oddly the robot remained placid, his expression bland as he nodded. Disgusted by that and everything else, Zim hurled the metal thing through the hole in the wall and stalked off to the kitchen. His eyes were downcast, angry and red in the lightless room. Fists clenched at his sides as he stepped onto the bare elevator beneath the far wall, it's disguise now a mess of broken porcelain.

It was the observation room that he let himself step out on. The saddle shape of a traditional Irken seat slid under him, and he stared listlessly at the blank screens for a moment before activating them manually. It had been long ago when the computer had rebelled and stopped listening to him.

The sullen look in his eyes melted away, molded itself smoothly and seamlessly into something bordering between hatred and insanity. He would find a way. Even if all of it had gone wrong before, he could do it. And he would. But, as for now, he would rest, think and plan and ignore everything else.

Gloved fingers flew over holographic keys and the text that showed up was reflected almost perfectly in his crimson eyes. And slowly, as the minutes ticked past and he thought and planned, a terrible smile picked at his lips. Soon. Soon it would all be set into motion.

**neoKOS-MOS:** First chapter dedicated to Goat. Reviews are nice. Thanks for reading.


	2. Downpour

**neoKOS-MOS:** Sorry for the long wait. Life took over, as it does sometimes.

**Downpour**

He woke in the morning in his bed with only vague recollections of dragging himself there after the blood had stopped flowing into his arm. His eyes were heavy as he opened them, vision foggy and warm around the edges. Light poured in through the window, streaks of it blocked out by the brown smears of dried blood on the glass. He rolled over, ignoring the pain that ignited in his side, and faced away from the sunlight, the rays warm on his back. Maybe he was too warm. He couldn't tell. Nothing seemed to be real at the moment, and the whole waking had felt too much like a dream. And if it was, this was a good one. Warm, safe in bed. Nothing to disturb the peace.

Zim. The name came to mind, and his eyes snapped open again, taking in the fuzziness of the room with growing clarity. Lines seemed to straighten out, and his eye was caught by the pile of red-stained-blue on the floor. His shirt. Oh yeah.

He looked down over himself. His legs were twisted hopelessly in the blood spattered sheets. He reached down and picked at them, wincing at the pain it caused in both his arm and leg. A good minute of wrestling with the fabric got him free of it, and he sat up.

His head suddenly exploded in pain, and Dib groaned, leaning over and holding it between his hands, pressing hard on his temples with stiff fingertips. Red and black, colors seen at the rim of his vision as the stars blossomed in the middle. An aching scream in the depths of his hearing. It seemed to go on for ever, agonizingly crisp and clear in his mind. And then he felt it start to ebb, pull away from the corners of his mind and recede to where it had come from. He let out a breath.

Eyes opened, lifted again to survey the room. It was bright, lit from the window and nothing else. His legs felt wooden and numb. His hands were unnaturally cold, and something was dripping down his back. Dib pulled himself to his feet and staggered to the bathroom.

He leaned heavily on the sink, staring with hollow eyes at his reflection again. There was still blood and grime everywhere. His hair looked awful. He stared at the jagged wound in his shoulder. Gaz had done a good job of sewing it up, and he traced the stitches over with a careful finger, feeling the pain that simple motion produced.

He took a shower, a careful one. Got out and sat naked on the toilet as he made his fingers work. Wrap cuts and scrapes. Rub ointment into the worst of them. The whole bottle of peroxide was gone as he finished rewrapping the gauze on his shoulder. Then he got dressed and went to eat breakfast.

It was one thirty. The microwave beamed it at him from across the room. One thirty in the after noon. _You missed work again, Dib._

"Shit," he muttered, not really caring as he pulled the milk out of the fridge. Not like it mattered. No matter how many jobs he lost, his dad always pulled the strings needed to get him another one.

Cereal. It wasn't like he was hungry, but the routine helped him think, and that was what he needed to do now. He didn't have class till six.

He chewed around a newly missing tooth, eyes dull and looking inward. Everything that had happened last night was a blur, the sum of everything going too fast and all the bloodloss. All he could be sure of was Zim. That the alien wasn't exactly right anymore, and it was unnerving. He had barely spoken, only muttering to himself as they fought, whisperings in Irken that Dib could only barely understand. And he was sure of it. As mind blowing as it was, he was sure that Zim had been crying, so angry and frustrated that he had been driven to tears.

It was all too unnerving. Dib dropped his spoon, a clink on the side of the bowl, cereal only half eaten. He looked out the window for a moment and got up. He couldn't stay here. Something was happening, and he could feel it. Even if it meant he got ripped to shreds again, he was going back to the alien's base and was going to make him talk. In English this time.

He pulled his other trench coat over his shoulders and shoved his keys and wallet into his pocket. The door closed with a click as he kicked it shut behind himself and walked off down the sidewalk. Overhead the sky was ugly green; tornado color. The clouds boiled in the high winds, streaking into long knives that raced along the zenith as if thrown. He kept his eyes on the pavement, occasionally glancing up to look around himself, make sure no one was following him. Not that that had happened for a while.

Wind ripped at his clothes as he got closer to the Irken's base, the hem of the coat blown tight around his legs. He glanced up long enough to take in the misshapen jungle gym of his old grammar school. It perched like an insect against the deathly green sky, one lonely black bird sitting on top. The creature watched him, eyes hard as diamonds as he passed by.

There really were no people out. The suburbs of the city were almost silent, but it was the wrong kind of silence. It seemed like a ghost town, and he started paying more attention to his surroundings. The wind howled through random oddly-shaped bits of housing. And that was it. No birds, no stray dogs prowling the street. No sick kids staring out the front window, making sure the freak dressed in black passed their house by.

"What did you do, Zim?" he whispered to the wind, boots slapping harder as he quickened his pace.

His eyes were cast toward the base even before he had turned the corner. And so his heart had turned over as soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk. It shouldn't have been different. In another world, it wouldn't have been. He had seen it a million times, that patch of ground between the two houses. But for the past eleven years it had been occupied, and now it was not.

He ran up to the plot, jumped clear over the sidewalk and landed on the flat ground. In the middle of it all there was a gaping black hole, heaps of dirt and broken concrete piled up around it so that he had to climb up vertically to actually see how deep the hole went. His hands grasped at pipes and twisted rebar as he pulled himself up, finally gaining purchase with his boots and pushing up to the top of the mound. He almost fell in. The wind ripped upward, out of the cavern and dispersed into the sky.

It was miles deep. He had always knew that the base went that far down, but Zim had just left it that way. Why had he done that? And the real question was, where was he now?

------

He had given up on going back home to get his car. It was too far, and the rain was looking to come down any minute. Back at the school yard, he glanced around before smashing the car window in with a hunk of concrete. He unlocked the door and pulled it open. No alarm. He searched through the normal spots that people hid keys. All empty. He swore under his breath and then pushed the seat back, ripping the dashboard open and crossing a few wires. It took him a few tries before the motor roared to life.

He pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the empty street at ninety miles an hour. Wherever Zim was, he was probably still in the city. And if it was as empty as the suburbs were, there was good reason to believe the Irken was the cause of all the emptiness.

The highway was barren, like it had been misplaced from a lonely desert road. He kicked the accelerator even more, the adrenaline rush of the speed making him tap nervous fingers on the steering wheel. He glanced out the side windows, looking for people, life. Anything.

"Shit, Zim. What the fuck did you do?" He hit the breaks, skidding to a stop as the real destruction began.

Buildings here toppled. Lengthwise across the street, broken concrete and twisted plumbing spilled out across the asphalt. He couldn't drive around that, and this was the fastest way into the center of the city. He sat at the wheel for a moment, fingers drumming the leather and eyes scanning the scene. _Whatever_. He killed the motor and got out of the car, boots crunching on white powdered plaster. He could smell fire, something burning somewhere with a hot, black smog that billowed up into the green sky. A crackle of lightning streaked dry across the clouds, and he turned up the collar of his trench coat as a drizzle began to fall. If it was going to rain, he was going to get wet.

Leaving the car behind, he crawled over the mess of building, the shattered carcass of the structure spilled out across the street as the broken foundation lay open to the sky. He jumped down on the other side with a thump, more dust clouding around his boots as he strode off down the middle of the avenue.

It was strange. This part of the city didn't feel as empty as the rest of it had been. He glanced to the shadows, eyes squinting at the blotches of darkness. There were people here; he caught a glimpse of a girl watching him, small and broken in the alcove of a building. And there were more, all watching him.

_Where are you, Zim? What did you do?_

His eyes narrowed, and he angled over to the girl. She pulled into the darkness more, trying to hide as he stepped into the tattered doorway. He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder. Not surprisingly, she kicked out at him, elbowed him in the stomach and he hissed as that sent a spark through his bruised ribs.

"Calm down," he barked at her, shook her a little until she obeyed and went limp, eyes cast at the ground between her feet. "What happened here?"

She didn't answer, mumbled something under her breath. He pressed her lightly against the cool brick of the alcove, tipped her head up to meet his eyes and asked her again, slow and firm. "What happened here?"

"I... I don't know. Everything just started shaking and then something exploded." She fumbled over words, the whole thing suddenly rushing out. "I was home sick today and then the TV went dead. And then it was shaking and everything was falling and I went outside because people were running outside anyway. And then the huge _Thing_ stepped into the middle of the street and started shooting people and throwing them around. And I don't even know..."

"Shh." He set a finger to his lips, caught her eyes again and held them there. She was only about eleven.

"It's not a lie," she whispered. "That's what happened."

"I know," he whispered back.

Her eyes shined back at him for a moment. "You... You do?"

Ignoring that, he glanced back out into the street where the rain was sifting down. "Look..." Realizing he didn't know her name, he paused, letting her fill it in.

"Lisa."

"Look, Lisa, I need you to tell me what the Thing looked like and where it went. It's something I have to take care of."

"Are you an FBI or something?" She suddenly seemed very interested.

Dib blinked, paused for a moment considering that. What a joke. No, he was only the insane son, the failure of the Membrane name. "No, but I've dealt with this kind of thing before."

Almost disappointed, her posture shrunk down again, and she bit her lip as she thought about his questions. "It was big and green, with a lot of dark red. Um, walked on two legs like the mech in the games my brother likes to play. And it shot purple lasers all over. Oh, and it had lots of long tentacle thingies that would grab people and throw them around..." Tears came to her eyes, and her hands clenched in the fabric of his coat. "It was scary."

Dib swallowed, pulled back again but she wasn't letting go. _Great job, Dib. You should have asked someone older and less frantic._ "Hey, it's okay." He offered weakly. "Which way did it go?"

She blinked, glanced up at him again and swallowed. "That way." She pointed off across the street. Northwest.

He stepped back, managed to pull his coat out of her grasp, and held her at arms length by the shoulders. "Okay. Thank you. Now, I want you to go find an adult and stay with them. It'll be okay."

"What? No, don't leave me alone." A frantic look spread across her face, but he held her firm.

"I can't stay with you. I have to take care of this. You'll be okay." He pointed across the street, at another of the dark patches of shadow he had seem people lurking in. "Look. Over there are some people who will take care of you. I have to go stop the Thing. Okay?"

She slackened again, and he pulled away, glad that she wasn't clinging to him anymore. The girl seemed to panic again as he stepped back into the street, almost throwing herself at him. He held her off, leaned down again and looked her straight in the eye.

"You'll be fine. Now go." He pointed again, watched as her eyes followed his finger. And then she went, stiffly and scared, but without a backwards glance.

He didn't wait, didn't stop to see that she made it across the street. His boots slapped the wet pavement, the light drizzle of before now an almost-rain that was threatening to turn into a downpour. His mind snapped to Zim. Rain and its effect on the Irken. He'd better find him fast, or he wouldn't be finding him at all.

The raindrops pelted harder as he stepped out into the middle of the vacant intersection, the cold water starting to soak through his hair. A wet wind hit him from the side and he glared into it, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and holding it closed around himself. He could feel the moisture seeping through the fabric already.

He just walked for a while, scanning the city. Getting drenched and progressively more pissed as time went on. Only the loud patter of rain on the pavement around him and the occasional loud crash of thunder overhead. It was getting dark too, streetlights out and only cloudlight and the steady flash of lightning in the sky. And then something shattered. It was a glass sound, not anything caused by the storm. He wiped spattered rain off his glasses and pushed his soaked hair back, looking over toward the sound.

This was stupid. It was raining too hard. Even if Zim was inside a robot, he always had an aversion to water. He wouldn't be out trashing the city in this. He could smell fire, the air thick with a smoke smell and the rain at his feet swirling black with the ash it washed out of the sky. He came to the corner, turned and stared into a raging fire. Somehow he hadn't seen it from the other side. The building was three away from the intersection he was standing at the edge of. The flames licked at the brick, charred it black as the rain pelted down in long sooty streaks. There were people standing out in the street, transfixed by the flames. Someone ran out of the building, through the shattered glass window across the front of it. Looters.

Dib walked up to them, stepped up next to the one girl in the group. She didn't seem to notice he was there for a second, the rain pounding and splattering, the cracks and pops as the burning building blazed red and orange. She jumped when she realized, pulled back and stared at him. The guys caught on then, turned and stared him down.

"What do you want?" one of them sneered.

"You shouldn't loot," he said, hands in his pockets. They reacted, opened their mouths to say something, but he cut them off. "But I don't really give a shit. Where'd the mech go?"

It wasn't like they could say they hadn't seen it. The whole street had a huge rupture down the middle of it, the sides smeared black where the laser had cut through. He looked at it for a moment before turning back to them. The one kid holding a TV motioned off down the street. He nodded at them and moved, boots sloshing through inch deep water.

And then he heard the scraping clump behind him. Metal ripped against asphalt through the pooling rain. He whirled, taking a step back as he connected what the thing was. The metal tentacles whirled and writhed, the cold legs dripping streams of rainwater and the cockpit gleaming in a sudden flash of lightning. He could see Zim's sadistic grin from inside, see the teeth and the smirk and the cruel twitch of his antennae as he identified his enemy.

_So you lived_, those alien lips whispered.

Dib swallowed, noted that the looters had run off somewhere. It was just him and the Irken.

It poured for a while, Zim standing there as the arms of his mech wriggled in the pouring rain. Water dripped from it in the clashing dark, and all the human could hear was the pounding splash of the downpour.

And then the mech moved, shot off the spot it was standing so fast the rain left a pool undisturbed for a second before it caught up. Dib ran, crossed sideways through the pooling water and into one of the empty buildings. He plunged into the darkness, felt the metal tentacle wrap around his foot and jerk him. He fell, almost smacked his face on the concrete floor as the arm retracted. Somehow, it slipped, released his boot at the last moment and dropped him to the ground. He took off into the building, made his way through the back door and into the alley on the other side.

He felt the metal thing smash through the building, didn't turn around to see it but kept running, the adrenaline somehow letting him ignore the smarting pain up both his legs and through is broken ribs. Air burned in his lungs. No, wait. It wasn't just there. He felt the laser heat up the space around him, choked on the ionized air molecules and made one last attempt to jump into an open door as he felt himself blacking out.

**neoKOS-MOS:** Second chapter for flying metal child. I hope to have the next one up sooner. Reviews are still nice.


	3. Break

a/n: _drive by update……………….. zoooommm!_

**Break**

He groaned before he opened his eyes. This pattern was getting annoying, always waking up in pain with a mild concussion and having to search his memory for what had happened before he'd passed out. Dib swallowed thickly, attempting to reach down to his side. Something had his wrist. He tried the other one, but that one was caught too. He looked up, slid his eyes carefully open to see what it was he was caught in. He sucked in a breath, jerked back a little as he realized what this all was.

It didn't feel like it, but he was hanging from his wrists. A glance down showed him some weird kind of suspension field, shining out of a blue ring and taking most of his weight with its invisible waves. He swallowed thickly, blood or something at the back of his throat, and flexed his fingers tentatively, stopping for a moment to think.

Dib craned his neck up again, squinted at his wrists through uncomfortably dry contacts before pulling against the cuffs, trying to see if there was any way for him to get away. It felt like freefall almost, except for the pulling at his feet, probably another pair of cuffs around his ankles. He stared at the metal binding his wrists, trying to think of some way he could get out of this.

"Dammit, Zim," he muttered under his breath, pulling down smoothly, trying to slip his hand out of the glowing blue restraints. An agonizing shock zipped down his arm, and he gasped in both surprise and pain.

"Don't do that. The only to get out of there is if you pull your hands and feet off."

He searched the shadows around him for the source of the Irken's voice. Finally his eyes adjusted and he picked out his dim shape, sitting hunched over something and staring out what looked like the inside of a giant windshield. Familiar shape, the connection snapped in his mind and he realized he was probably inside the mech. It looked a lot bigger inside than he'd thought. But, then again, he wasn't really scared of Zim when he was inside as well. There wasn't that impersonability factor.

Now what?

"What do you want, Zim?" His throat was dry and his voice came out sounding a lot weaker than he'd meant it to. Still didn't seem to change anything in what he could see of the alien.

Those sharp fingers scattered over the board in front of him, pushing out the directions for the huge robot. No lights, just countless points of greens and reds, showing the functionality of whatever they corresponded to. A lot of reds, actually. Dimly, out the dark, dark glass of the viewing port, he could see the surroundings slowly peeling away to reveal others. No jolts from inside to tell of those massive footfalls, though. A few minutes until Zim spoke, just a flick of his antennae to signal that his attention was anywhere different.

"You know what I want. I told you when I got here."

A short, hoarse laugh. He just eyed the Irken, looking out as if he was peering over the tops of his absent glasses. "You're still on that? I thought you'd given it up a long time ago."

Something in the alien tensed up, hands gripping the side panels of the controls but he didn't turn around.

"Come on, Zim. It's been a game forever, even if it's been getting more and more dangerous as time goes on." But it was eating at him, the destruction, the city. "You're breaking the rules now."

The rule that it was always for them, and them only.

Zim flew out of his seat, spider legs whipping out in one motion until the Irken's claws were clenched in the collar of his torn trench coat, eyes blazing fire again and serrated teeth set in a snarl. Something in Dib flinched, but he kept it under the surface.

"There _are_ no rules anymore!"

"And what changed that?" he spat, venom laced in the words. "Did your stupid Tallest finally call and tell you that your mission was a fake from the start?"

"Fuck you!" the alien hissed, his voice way below his normal octave range, threatening and unnerving. "You don't know anything. What if it was a fake? What if it was all some kind of sick joke? It doesn't change that I'm going to conquer this disgusting ball of shit, and that you're going to have to watch and be the last one to die." Claws had clenched through cloth, and Dib sucked in a breath as they sliced through his skin again. God, that hurt. But the look in Zim's eyes, that distant look that had never been there before when they were fighting. His thoughts were elsewhere. He didn't care about the game. And the human's eyes went wide as it hit home; there really weren't any rules anymore.

An alarm went off, simple klaxon with no computer warning. The Irken spun, hand ripping more flesh but at least not with all the fury he'd been using a moment before. He hung there, body taut over the seat he'd been sitting in a few moments earlier, hands touching controls and eyes glancing as five lights changed from green to red simultaneously. He swore in Irken, those few strange alien words that were so familiar by now. A kick to the console, and two flickered back to green as he settled back into the saddle seat.

Dib watched him, something like panic in how he held himself, and then he tapped something and jerked holocontrols hard-left. A shudder screamed through the mech, klaxons going off all over. Looking up, squinting through matted bangs again, the human pulled at the cuffs around his wrists. Maybe he could get out before the thing collapsed or blew up with him inside. Then, just as he felt the thing get ready to shock him again, the blue light of the suspension field cut out and he fell, trapped by the one still holding his ankles but at least free enough to be ready to move if and when the bottom one cut out too.

Zim was distracted, back to piloting the mech, evading something that Dib couldn't see through the thick black of the windshield. At the back of his mind, he berated himself. That was supposed to be his job, stopping the alien. But then the blue below him died and he ripped the two cuffs on his wrists apart so they were two rings instead of a figure-eight. It only took another second till his ankles were free too, and he was up, grabbing hold of anything to keep him upright in the pitching of the cabin. At least three paces and he was at the back wall, hands clamped over the lock of the hatch and yanking on it to get it open.

Fresher air rushed inside as he cracked the seal, sucking the door out of his hands so that it banged against the hull on heavy hinges. It looked like a war zone out there, Apache helicopters beating the air and following them. A rocket whizzed by, narrowly missing the rear of the mech, and Dib jumped back a little from the doorway, hands clenched white on the frame to keep himself steady. The shock absorbers had obviously gone off-line, and the whole world seemed to be pounding with massive footfalls and the sound of gunfire.

Zim's voice brought him back to where he was, and he glanced over his shoulder at the alien, still frantically trying to keep his machine running. "What!" He yelled over the pounding helicopter rotors and the rain.

Zim looked back, their eyes locked again for a second. He looked scared, but it didn't reflect in his voice. "I won't stop. I _will_ take over this world."

"Yeah, whatever, Zim." But Dib swallowed, hesitating in the doorway. Dammit, it wasn't supposed to end this way.

He jumped, grabbing a handful of cables in the left leg of the machine to make his way to the ground. He clung there, his shoulder aching, to the backwards knee of the mech, just staring at the ground as the thing moved to set its foot on the cracked asphalt again. Another handhold just under the joint, he slid down to the ankle and jumped away from it as the foot lifted again; another footstep Zim had managed to coax out of the failing machine.

He watched it move off down the block for a while, sitting slumped down against the side of a shattered building and breathing hard. _Need to get home, need to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do._ His head was swimming again, and his shoulder hurt almost as much as it had the night before. He'd probably ripped the stitches out.

The mech staggered out of sight, firing lasers at passing aircraft and writhing coils at whatever they threw its way. Maybe he could get out of the city, but Zim was in trouble. He'd have to ditch that failing thing soon, and then he'd be on foot. In the rain. Dib swallowed, heart pounding. Shit, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be him chasing, and now he was just sitting here doing nothing. The human pressed a palm to the wall and pulled himself up, exhausted. His sleeve was wet, and from more than just the rainfall. He needed blood and he needed a car to get out of the city and find Zim. They needed to end this right.

-------------------

Gaz looked up from a bowl of cereal and a gaming magazine as her brother pushed in the front door. He was drenched, water dripping on the carpet as he shut the door and staggered through the living room to the basement.

"So it didn't work, huh?" she muttered, just loud enough so he'd hear her. He almost jumped, and she bit back a smirk as he looked at her.

"Gaz..." Dib just stared for a second; he almost looked shell shocked. "I thought you'd gotten out or something," he finally managed.

"Pfft. Roads were jammed, and I wasn't in the mood to be flipped off by soccer moms in minivans." She pulled herself out of the chair, dumping soggy half-eaten Frankenchokies in the sink. "Anyway, you were off saving the world, so what did I have to worry about?"

The dripping sarcasm got a reaction out of him, and he slammed a bloody hand on the countertop, teeth set. "I know you don't care, but would you at least stop fucking throwing it in my face just for laughs. This is serious this time. I have no idea what he's doing, and if I don't get out there, he'll probably be dead."

Gaz leaned back against the counter, watching him out of the corner of her eye. "Isn't that what you want? Jeez, Dib, you've been playing around too long. Do you care or not?"

He swore, fingers pressed into his temples. The rain was still pounding down outside. It never rained this hard.

"It's been so long," he said flatly. "It can't end this way."

She scoffed, kicking at her chair so it slid back under the table. "Whatever, loser. You're bleeding all over the floor. Better do something about that if you're gonna run back out into the rain and save him." Grabbing her magazine again, she slipped by him and went up to her room.

Behind her, Dib slowly slid to the floor and just sat there staring for a moment before struggling up and making his way to the basement again to patch up.

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end

a/n: Had trouble with this chapter, like whoa. What can I say, I hate writing exposition.

I like the word 'klaxon.'

Please review. **Concrit is very welcome!** Thanks for reading, and your patience. :)


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